


Arslantepe (The Red-Smith Remix)

by lferion



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Bronze Age, M/M, Remix, Smithcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't ever think you'll take me, boy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arslantepe (The Red-Smith Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Vote Drabbles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/37258) by [Taz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/pseuds/Taz). 



> Many, many thanks to J & M and both As for encouragement and input. Thanks also go to Taz for writing such amazing stuff to work from.

***

_Steel-sharp edge presented,  
As a present  
Meant  
With love_

Methos woke. Something had changed. There was a new weight on the fur at his side. Viper-quick he moved, the long fingers of his off-hand catching up the thing resting on his thigh, the other hand reaching without thought for the dagger under the fold of fur that served as a pillow. Starlight flashed on stars, on the honed, brazen edge. Nothing else moved in the camp but the wind that soughed through the grasses. The horses were dim shadows on the other side of the banked fire; his brothers slept undisturbed in their furs. His fingers recognized the shape of the new thing in them: a weapon, a knife.

Narrow-eyed, Methos turned the unexpected blade over in his hand, the metal glinting bright in the moonlight, cold and pale. Not copper or bronze, nor black iron either. Supple and subtle and sharp. Blood beaded where the tip had touched, obsidian dark. A weapon of the gods, this, made of twilight, neither by white-smith or red-smith or black, but something between: a grey-smith, mist-smith, star-smith. 

Who had that smith been; to make such a thing and gift it, wordless, laying it (sheathed in cunningly tanned and dyed leather, not flesh) in the fold of his blanket-cloak, while Death slept?

And why to _him?_

Wellan would do such a thing, did he live still. Wellan _had._ In the days when bronze was new. When Methos had been more boy than man, newly Immortal, and apprenticed to the Smith.

***

_The ribbon of liquid metal, snaking from the crucible, glowed like the sun. Tomorrow...  “Young fool.” Wellan laughed. Methos looked up from where he was squatting next to the mold. He met the smith’s dark eyes. “It is just something for you to show off and parade in.” The old man put his hand to the flint knife at his belt. The bone hilt was carved in the form of a snake. He gripped it hard. “This is sharper. Don’t ever think you’ll take me, boy.”_   

Wellan's eyes held his, steady and filled with a light and a knowledge that Methos suddenly knew he wanted. Thought like quicksilver darted in those depths, and Methos' heart lusted for that edge as much or more than his hand did for the new knife taking shape under the Smith's hand, a sun-shard caught and formed from fire, skill and mystery both.

_Don’t ever think you’ll take me, boy._

He hadn't, until that moment. Until seeing the metal, liquid, shaping itself to the mold; forming a blade that could bend where stone broke.

Wellan had taken him, taught him, shaped him, tested and tried and loved him. A hard mastery, but not cruel, not careless; demanding much and giving much in return. But the nature of a successful apprenticeship is that the student grow, learn, reach for mastery himself. Methos was not a master yet, by no means, not even a journeyman quite. He knew, now, what he wanted.

_You talk, boy. Always words. Chatter, tales, riddles, words. Will words put the edge on a blade? Will riddles put food in your belly? Work, boy. No more words._

***

His name meant hawk.

Hawks ate snakes, stooping and snatching them from the ground, talons sharp and swift. Hawks went with the wind, shaping their flight to the invisible forces that sent clouds scurrying across the sky, agile and fleet and clever. But one never underestimated a snake, either. Snakes would bide their time, curled in the shadow of a tussock of wind-stirred grass, still in the dim recess of an outcropping of rock, waiting for the unwary foot, the careless hand. Sometimes the snake won, even against the hawks.

There was a lesson there. Methos kept it in mind. It was cold that slowed the serpent, but never assume it is dead, no matter how still. Wellan's ears were even sharper than his eyes, and his eyes had seen many, many turns of the seasons. 

The bronze was cooling now, the bead of dazzling white-gold that glowed in the well of the mold shading down through the colors of sunset — yellow to orange to the rich and ruddy hue of bronze. The mold was dark where the metal had scorched the edges. The stone held heat, though, it wasn't cool enough yet to loose the sinews that held the two halves together and turn out the rough shape. There was finish-work to be done: smoothing and polishing, inlay and decoration. 

The sky was taking on the colors of the cooling metal, the sun disappearing behind the hills, limning their sharp, black silhouettes with fire. 

_Tomorrow._

***

When Wellan slept after taking his usual evening pleasure, Hawk watched him, feeling the pleasant ache of use and the tactile memory of strong fingers sparking fire in tender places, calloused hands on Hawk's straining cock even as Wellan was sheathed in him, stroking deep and hard. Unlike some masters, the smith was a considerate man, expecting the boy to find enjoyment and release in the exercise, rather than attending only to his own desires.

What would it be like, to be the one taking? To be the stiff blade pressing in, and not the yielding flesh bending before it, however exquisite the sensation? 

***

Death sought out the smith (red-smith and white, stone-smith, bone-smith, tempered and annealed and old, old, old; a black-smith, a star-smith, a shaper of souls and flesh as well as metal) not far from the camp where his brothers still slept unheeding. The grey blade was, indeed, a gift.

The older man bent, stiff beneath him as Methos gloried in the thrust, in sheathing himself in tight wet heat, in feeling Wellan's shaft jump and pulse in his hand just as Hawk's had in Wellan's all those years ago. Methos could feel the brittle, unyielding core of the smith, and understood his own heart to be more malleable, less obdurate: bronze, not flint. It was his mind, his will, that was this new metal, quicksilver and keen.

Take and be taken, give and receive, bend and not break. Be a hawk on the wind; understand the snake in the grass.

Live and let live. 

Death did not rive Wellan's quickening, but Methos was merciless and swift in vengeance on the man who did. 

***

After enough time, even the stars shift in the heavens.

Wellan had in the end been too like his black stone blades-- hard and sharp and brittle in his unyielding strength. He had forgotten how to bend, and broke instead. He had taught Hawk well; better than either of them could know on the wide and desolate steppes, thin of people in the morning of the world.

In a comfortable bed, under soft blankets and between smooth sheets, Methos nuzzled at the soft place behind the ear of his dark haired, Hephaestian lover. He always had been, and still was, notably partial to smiths. There was still a blade under the pillow, but love had long proven stronger than death. 

_...cut the thongs. Break the mold. Set the blade with silver stars._

_Methos smiled._

***


End file.
